Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Unit Testing with Junit, Spring and Hibernate - Part 2

This is a continuation from my previous post on Spring and MockStrutsTestCase and focus on testing Hibernate DAO's. As I mentioned in the previous post, Spring framework provides a nifty base class (AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests) that provides automatic transaction rollback, exposing a JDBC template to interact with the DB and auto wiring of beans.

Lets take a simple DAO class that save a User object to the database:

public class UserDaoImpl extends HibernateDaoSupport implements UserDao {
public void save(User user) {
getHibernateTemplate().save(user);
}
}

Now in order to test this you would write a test class as below extending from AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests class.


public class UserDaoTest extends AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests {
private UserDao userDao;
private SessionFactory sessionFactory = null;

protected String[] getConfigLocations() {
return new String[]{"test-spring-config.xml"};
}

/**
* Spring will automatically inject UserDao object on startup
* @param userDao
*/
public void setUserDao(UserDao userDao) {
this.userDao = userDao;
}

/**
* Spring will automatically inject the Hibernate session factory on startup
* @param sessionFactory
*/
public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}

/**
* Test the save method
*
*/
public void testSave(){
String query = "select count(*) from user where first_name = 'Firstname'";
int count = jdbcTemplate.queryForInt(query);
assertEquals("A user already exists in the DB", 0, count);

User user = new User();
user.setFirstName("Firstname");

userDao.saveUser(user);

// flush the session so we can get the record using JDBC template
SessionFactoryUtils.getSession(sessionFactory, false).flush();

count = jdbcTemplate.queryForInt(query);
assertEquals("User was not found in the DB", 1, count);
}
}

The test class has to implement the protected String[] getConfigLocations() method from the base class and return a String array of Spring config files which will be used to initialize the Spring context.

UserDao and SessionFactory properties are defined with the setter methods and the base class will take care of injecting them automatically from the Spring context. Auto wiring will not work if there are multiple objects implementing the same interface. In such a case you can remove the setter method and retrieve the object using the exposed applicationContext as below.

   /**
* Overridden method from base class which gets called automatically
*/
protected void onSetUpBeforeTransaction() throws Exception {
super.onSetUpBeforeTransaction();
userDao = (UserDao) applicationContext.getBean("userDao");
}

The base class also exposes a JDBC template object (jdbcTemplate) that can be used to query data or setup test data in the database. Note that you need to have a data source and a transaction manager defined in your Spring config in order to use the AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests base class. The data source defined in the config file will be bound to the exposed JDBC template.

In the testSave method first we verify there is no record in the User table where first name equals to 'Firstname' using the jdbc template object. Then we call the save method on the UserDao passing it a User object.

Now we simple verify there is a record in the table where first name equals to 'Firstname'. Before running the query we flush the current Hibernate session to make sure jdbcTemplate can see the newly added record.

Thats it and when the testSave method exits the current transaction will be rolled back and the record inserted to the User table will not be saved. This is great as your test database will always be at a know state at the start and end of a test method.

The spring config file will like below (test-spring-config.xml) :

<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

<beans>
<bean name="userDao" class="com.dao.UserDaoImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="sessionFactory"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource">
<ref bean="dataSource"/>
</property>
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>hibernates/User.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.query.factory_class">org.hibernate.hql.classic.ClassicQueryTranslatorFactory</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>


<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:ORCL" />
<property name="username" value="test" />
<property name="password" value="test" />
</bean>


<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory"><ref local="sessionFactory"/></property>
</bean>

</beans>

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Friday, July 27, 2007

How to Properly Iterate a Collection in Java

There are multiple ways to iterate a collection in Java among many other things but that doesn't mean all are equally elegant or easy on the eyes. Just as some ways to skin a cat are messier than others (Not that I have ever skinned a cat or any other animal for that matter). Anyhoo I'm making this post in hopes of at least few developers starting on Java will see it before starting to write code in a commercial project.

I came across a code base of a project that was developed mostly by a bunch of junior developers and most of the code that iterates a collection was in the following format

List administrators = getAdministrators();

if (administrators.size() > 0) {
Iterator administratorsItr = administrators.iterator();
Administrator administrator = null;
while (administratorsItr.hasNext()) {
administrator = (Administrator) administratorsItr.next();
//rest of the code block removed
}
}
}

Just looking at that piece of code made my head spin :). The worst part was that this is the style most of the junior developers had adopted and could be seen all over the code base.

Just for the record I would have written it in the following way (actually would have let the IDE write it for me)

List administrators = getAdministrators();

for (Iterator iter = administrators.iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
Administrator administrator = (Administrator) iter.next();
//rest of the code block removed
}

The above two code blocks achieve the same thing, the difference been, first is 9 lines long and the second is 4 lines. Most importantly you can figure out whats going on easily by looking at the second code block.

The worst part is IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA will write it for you. All you have to do is type itco and press ctrl + space keys just after the List administrators = ... line.

I don't know if there is something similar on Eclipse but you can import all these nifty IDEA Live Templates into Eclipse. Just head over to this page where you can find the xml file and instructions on how to import the file.

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Achieve Automatic Transaction Rollback with MockStrutsTestCase and Spring

Spring provides a convenience base class (AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests which extends the TestCase class from Junit) to automatically rollback any updates made to the database at the end of a test method. This works great when integration testing Service and DAO beans but it wont help when integration testing the Struts layer with MockStrutsTestCase.

Spring does not provide a class such as AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests that extends from the MockStrutsTestCase. This might be due to practical issues with the way Spring context initialization works when using MockStrutsTestCase. I tried achieving the transaction rollback in the same way as was done in the AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests class but it didn't work out as the application code started a new transaction and commited as usual without using the transaction I started in my own subclass of MockStrutsTestCase.

Another option left for me was to go down to the Transaction Manager level and achieve the rollbacks there. The application uses Hibernate at the DAO level and it was using HibernateTransactionManager as the transaction manager implementation when running test cases . Therefore I had to write a new class extending from HibernateTransactionManager which overrides the doCommit() method. The overridden method will call doRollback() method in the super class. This would rollback the current running transaction even if the declarative transaction handling code in Spring calls doCommit on the transaction manager.


package com.xyz.txn;

import org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager;

public class HibernateRollbackTxnManager extends HibernateTransactionManager {

/*
* doCommit method that calls the doRollback method of the super class.
*
*/
protected void doCommit(DefaultTransactionStatus txnStatus) {
super.doRollback(txnStatus);
}
}

Finally override the default transaction manager in your test spring bean configuration with the rollback only implementation.

<bean id="txnManager" class="com.com.xyz.txn.HibernateRollbackTxnManager">
<property name="sessionFactory"><ref local="sessionFactory"></property>
</bean>


The same strategy would work with other transaction managers such as DataSourceTransactionManager too.

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Save Time Fixing Ant Errors With -verbose Switch

Resolving ant errors can be a pain sometimes because of the vague error messages you get on the console. Yesterday I was getting a "Process fork failed." error on my Junit task and all I got on the console was

BUILD FAILED
C:\work\builds\build.xml:58: Process fork failed.


I wasted a couple of hours on google looking for an answer and after failing to fix the issue with several suggested solutions, I stumbled upon one post that suggested enabling the verbose output of Ant. All you had to do was pass -verbose as a command line parameter to ant

ant -verbose <target>

That made ant display lot of details including the actual exception. In my case it was:

C:\work\build\build.xml:58: Process fork failed.
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTask.executeAsForked(JUnitTask.java:871)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTask.execute(JUnitTask.java:679)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTask.executeOrQueue(JUnitTask.java:1413)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTask.execute(JUnitTask.java:633)
at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:275)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:364)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:341)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:369)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1216)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1185)
at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.DefaultExecutor.executeTargets(DefaultExecutor.java:40)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1068)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:668)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:187)
at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:246)
at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:67)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: CreateProcess: C:\bea92\jdk150_04\jre\bin\java.exe ...


I found the issue a little bit above the exception on the console and it was the massive classpath value passed into the java.exe. Obviously the Windows command line has a limitation on the length of command line arguments and the value for classpath was exceeding it.

When I checked the build file I found the error, where it was adding the files in a directory instead of the directory into the classpath. Fixed that small error and all was fine again.

Anyway glad I got to know about the verbose switch in Ant and hopefully I wouldn't have to waste a lot of time again fixing ant issues again.

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